Capital letters and small letters, that's how I remember learning to write in grade school. My left hand would ache from writing each one, as neatly as possible, over and over again. I don't remember anything about a coconut tree.

I obviously didn't have Cindy Farnham for a teacher.

Before one recent lesson, the new hire at Edgecomb Eddy School went around the classroom hiding coconut-shaped cards with letters on them.

Then her 17 kindergarteners and first-graders had to find them and work as a group to sort them on the floor. “They had to put the babies and the moms together,” she said.

“Babies and moms” is an engaging, helpful way to describe uppercase and lowercase letters to the school's youngest students. After sorting, the cards are arranged on the classroom wall in the shape of a coconut tree.

A kayaker and hiker, Farnham, 35, of Boothbay Harbor, often incorporates nature into her lessons. While studying the life cycle of an apple tree, students went outside and gathered items that, when assembled, looked like an apple tree.

They looked at pieces of bark under a magnifying glass, picked apples at Biscay Orchards in Damariscotta and then they and Edgecomb Eddy's second-graders pressed those apples into cider with a hand-crank press at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay.

The field trips and other activities help keep the learning “hands-on,” Farnham said. “And it's good for this age group to get up and move whenever possible.”

The Southport-raised, 1995 Boothbay Region High School graduate arrived at Edgecomb Eddy with 11 years' teaching experience. Past jobs have been at Boothbay Head Start, the Sheepscot Valley Children's House in Wiscasset and, for the past 3 years, Southport Central School.

“I feel very fortunate to be able to live here and work here where I grew up,” she said. “It's such a beautiful area here. I love it.”

Farnham's days “go by really quickly” teaching the two youngest grades at Edgecomb Eddy. The first graders have taken on a leadership role for the kindergarteners, showing them how to line up or meet in a circle.

“I like to watch the growth and development. It's so rewarding to see them learn one skill and then keep growing,” she said of her students. “It's sort of an amazing journey.”

Susan Johns can be reached at 844-4633 or sjohns@wiscassetnewspaper.com.